Pet owners typically have a great deal of affection for their pets. Many, in fact, consider their pets to be members of their families, and treat them accordingly by indulging them to a great degree. One of the ways owners indulge their pets is by the food they purchase for them. In this context, many owners derive pleasure from feeding their pets foods which contain shaped food pieces which the owner identifies with the particular type of pet. An example of this would be a bone-shaped food piece in a dog food.
Of course, these shaped food pieces must also contribute to satisfying the nutritional requirements for the particular pet. To accomplish this, the shaped pieces are preferably prepared from proteinaceous and farinaceous material. The term proteinaceous material refers to glutens such as wheat gluten, corn gluten, rice gluten, and other types of cereal grain glutens known to those skilled in the art; proteinaceous material obtained from other sources such as defatted oil seed protein material; dried eggs; whole corn; wheat germ meal; dehulled soy meal; meat and bone meal; and other known proteinaceous sources. The term farinaceous material refers to cereal flours such as wheat flour, corn flour, rice flour, oat flour, and other types of cereal flours known to those skilled in the art; ground hard wheat; ground whole corn; and other types of ground cereal-based grain material.
One problem in preparing such extruded, shaped pieces is that many pet foods have to undergo the extreme processing conditions of a retort sterilization procedure. For certain shaped proteinaceous materials, such as meat analogs, this is not a concern. These meat analogs retain their analog properties even when subjected to a retort operation. However, these meat analogs are structurally different than the shaped pieces of the present invention in that they are typically prepared from texturized vegetable protein (TVP) and may have a striated texture. By "striated texture" it is meant that the shaped piece tends to have a texture analogous to muscle striations. This striated texture allows the shaped piece to be easily torn apart along the striations, and as such the piece does not have to maintain a distinct and definite shape when subjected to a retort operation.
The extruded shaped pieces of the present invention do not have such a striated texture, however, but instead are, for the most part, cohesive. Until now, extruded shaped pieces having a cohesive texture like those of the present invention could not withstand the extreme conditions of a retort operation, but would typically dissolve when retorted. This would be undesirable since the shaped piece would not maintain its original shape and form, but would be unrecognizable.
Thus, shaped food pieces having the cohesive consistency of the shaped pieces of the present invention are useful only when they are retort-stable, i.e., do not dissolve upon hydration and/or retorting, but maintain their desired shape. The present invention provides such a piece, as well as a process for its preparation.